Gael Hillyard is an artist and writer based in Inverness, working with light, place and perception. Her practice moves between painting, mixed media and writing, with landscape understood as atmosphere, structure and lived experience. Her work draws on the Atlantic Edge and landscapes of Scotland and beyond, including the Highlands, Orkney, Fair Isle and other remote or threshold places. Astronomy, dark skies and ecology inform the way she thinks about light, scale and the human relationship to wild and fragile environments. She is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and engages actively with dark sky advocacy and the effects of light pollution. Her paintings are built from material and atmosphere, working with the physical properties of place rather than simply its depiction. Her understanding of landscape has been shaped by forestry, ecology and practical land stewardship, including the long-term care of a beach in Orkney and a previous garden with around 500 trees. This hands-on relationship with soil, canopy, growth and seasonal change sits alongside her spatial background in interior design, giving her practice a strong sense of atmosphere, structure and material presence. Her writing extends this enquiry through observation, reflection and the language of place. She is currently developing ‘What Remains’, a body of work concerned with layered landscapes, ecological fragility, and geological memory. This work explores planetary boundaries, and the traces left by natural and human forces.